#region Apache License
//
// Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more 
// contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with
// this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership. 
// The ASF licenses this file to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0
// (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with 
// the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
//
// http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
//
// Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
// distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
// WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
// See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
// limitations under the License.
//
#endregion

using System;
using System.IO;

namespace log4net.ObjectRenderer
{
  /// <summary>
  /// Implement this interface in order to render objects as strings
  /// </summary>
  /// <remarks>
  /// <para>
  /// Certain types require special case conversion to
  /// string form. This conversion is done by an object renderer.
  /// Object renderers implement the <see cref="IObjectRenderer"/>
  /// interface.
  /// </para>
  /// </remarks>
  /// <author>Nicko Cadell</author>
  /// <author>Gert Driesen</author>
  public interface IObjectRenderer
  {
    /// <summary>
    /// Render the object <paramref name="obj"/> to a string
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="rendererMap">The map used to lookup renderers</param>
    /// <param name="obj">The object to render</param>
    /// <param name="writer">The writer to render to</param>
    /// <remarks>
    /// <para>
    /// Render the object <paramref name="obj"/> to a 
    /// string.
    /// </para>
    /// <para>
    /// The <paramref name="rendererMap"/> parameter is
    /// provided to lookup and render other objects. This is
    /// very useful where <paramref name="obj"/> contains
    /// nested objects of unknown type. The <see cref="M:RendererMap.FindAndRender(object, TextWriter)"/>
    /// method can be used to render these objects.
    /// </para>
    /// </remarks>
    void RenderObject(RendererMap rendererMap, object obj, TextWriter writer);
  }
}
